Who else hates Microsoft Windows?

[Money_Pits]

Just so everyone's aware, you can run windows 10 unactivated, assuming you don't need the pro features, and are ok with your desktop background being reset at random, forever. A few years ago, I did pretty much the same as OP, but I just left mine unactivated, and works fine. Microsoft may change that one day, or they may lock me out of my account, but right now is smooth sailing.

 

EDIT: I forgot about the Activate Windows watermark thats always in the bottom right hand corner of my screen, but I have a big screen and it doesn't really bother me.

 

[derf]

10 minutes ago, Pete M said:

depends on how far you want to take the metaphor.  go back much further and it's a milk jug of gas with a pinhole punched in the bottom. 

The Pentium was when they really started getting sophisticated under the hood.  The pipeline feeding a trio of RISC cores to implement the CISC instructions, predictive branching, memory cache, etc. all showed up with the Pentium.  It was a huge step up from the 486.  It's like going from a carburetor to fuel injection.

[Dzimm]

54 minutes ago, Money_Pits said:

Just so everyone's aware, you can run windows 10 unactivated, assuming you don't need the pro features, and are ok with your desktop background being reset at random, forever. A few years ago, I did pretty much the same as OP, but I just left mine unactivated, and works fine. Microsoft may change that one day, or they may lock me out of my account, but right now is smooth sailing.

 

EDIT: I forgot about the Activate Windows watermark thats always in the bottom right hand corner of my screen, but I have a big screen and it doesn't really bother me.

 

This is very true and kind of nice as an option.  I built a photo editing rig for a friend a few years ago and it's still running an unactivated Windows 10. 

 

For me there are some features I needed and honestly the point of them bastards trying to tell me I had to pay $350 for a new license.  Freakin dumb.

[BeatCJ]

5 hours ago, Dzimm said:

 I am young enough that I just missed DOS in school.  Would have been nice to learn it back then, would have been good knowledge to have over the years.

School? That was work, about 5 years in. On a Compaq with an 8088 processor,  a green phospor 6" monitor. It was a portable, looked like a sewing machine. We still used a mainframe for a lot of things. I usually entered my stuff myself, but we had a few people that filled out forms by hand and sent them in to be entered by key punch operators.

[eaglescout526]

Noted. If I get any old computers, I know I can consult the club. 

[olddude]

10 hours ago, Pete M said:

what he's saying is: "2 barrel carburetor"

@ barrel carburetor I understand the rest is Greek to me 

[olddude]

Just now, olddude said:

@ barrel carburetor I understand the rest is Greek to me 

I type about as well as I work the computer

[thecodemonk]

For me, it's just a tool...and like any tool, it sometimes doesn't work perfectly or needs maintenance/assistance (especially if I'm changing anything about it).

 

Windows is my primary OS because I like to play video games in my offtime and is most compatible with most programs I use.

Apple is a secondary OS for me because I also like to dabble in music production and, while most programs exist on Windows and work well enough, they work WAY better on the Macs.

Linux is the OS I want to love because it appeals to my inner and outer nerd and it has real customizability.  I love how efficient it can be.  But very little of what I want to run...runs on linux.

ChromeOS is...ok for basic functionality, but that's about it, so any of the other OS's fulfill this need and with battery life like you get in the new M1 Macbooks, ChromeOS is largely obsolete as modern laptops can do what it does and more.